Chapter 65
EMBERLINE
Iwas close enough to count the pores in my uncle’s nose. Every line fanned out around his eyes.
To wrap my hands around his throat or stab my knife into his heart, but no matter how badly I wanted to kill him, Giovanni had the advantage—Luca.
I was close enough to tell something else.
My brother was a shell with nothing left inside.
Ever since he’d appeared, I’d been trying to reach him, trying to batter down that mental wall between us, to rip it apart with my nails, but the shield was impenetrable.
“Your brother was on his way to Rome with Lord Blackwood when I intercepted them,” Giovanni said pleasantly.
I kept my face blank, my mind empty.
Had Romulus been found out?
Did they know everything?
“Since we are family, I have him on loan, shall we say?” Giovanni inched closer, keeping the knife at Luca’s throat, long lines of reeking blood streaking down his pale throat, soaking his collar black.
“After this is over and you are all dead, Luca will go to Rome, of course. Serve Blackwood and anyone who has need of his skills. I expect not everyone will be as kind as me, but you only have yourself to blame for this, don’t you, Emberline?”
I tore my attention from my brother’s face and stared at Giovanni, picturing him dead in a hundred gruesome ways.
“You could have left him out of this, and now look at him. Ruined, good for only one thing.” His malice was like a living thing, thick on every word.
“Can you guess all the ways your sweet brother will be used in Rome? I’ve heard their corruption exceeds even my own. Hard to believe, but there it is.”
It took everything I had to pinch my lips together and let anger rise like a poisoned tide. To swamp me with hate and the unflinching will to consider the unthinkable.
I had to kill my brother.
There was no coming back from this transformation.
A permanent, painful existence, Nico had explained. Hours and days and weeks filled with pain, body slowly decaying until death finally claimed him. And once he was fully under Blackwood’s control…
Without Nico to torture and only my brother as his target, Luca would suffer.
Suffer in ways I didn’t want to imagine. In ways I couldn’t imagine. And right now—this very second—was the closest I’d ever get to ending all that impending, horrible suffering.
I was many things, but I’d never had Luca’s big heart.
I’d inherited Ottavia’s pragmatism instead. And logic told me Luca couldn’t be saved now.
“I’m sorry, Luca.” Grief was a heavy weariness in my bones, a weight I’d drag behind me as long as I lived. “I tried… tried so hard to be a good sister. This is my fault. None of this is on you, I just… needed to say that out loud.”
Gio chuckled, shaking his head as though that was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. His knife hand trembled—unused to holding that position for so long—and I was shifting my feet, grinding my heels deeper into the dirt, thighs tensed to spring…
Light sparked in Luca’s eyes—recognition, face changing into old, familiar lines as he gazed down at me, mouth forming one word.
The same word that rang so very clearly in my head as the mental bond between us opened wide
Run.
The world paused as I peered up into my brother’s face, hope blooming for one impossible second before the darkness reclaimed him. Luca’s warmth bled away, leaving only the cruel, ancient thing staring back at me.
I hadn’t imagined it.
Luca was still in there. My brother was alive.
Better yet, our connection was wide open, although what was on the other side… I shook my head at the noise, some muddled mix of deep tapping and insectile chittering sounds.
My hand slipped off the hilt of my knife, horror bubbling in my stomach at what I’d very nearly done. Throwing up a prayer of thanks to whatever gods were watching over us, I stepped back, breathing fast, debating what my next move should be.
“You always were good at speeches, niece, but words won’t save you today.
” Giovanni looked past me, through the ruins and toward the dock, his face lighting up.
A whisper of sound was punctuated by frantic shouting behind me, and at the same time, one of the guards pulled out his gun, and I braced myself as he fired…
Not at me… at Nico.
Who tumbled backward in the belfry tower, disappearing from sight.
Then another quick shot—straight into Gabriel’s chest, leaving a smoking hole in what remained of his bloodied shirt.
“Iron pins,” my uncle explained as the whisper of sound turned into the clicking of talons approaching across stone and gravel. “I’ll leave you to your fate, then. I imagine they’ll make quick work of you.”
With that, he vanished, taking Luca with him.
I swallowed and turned to find the boats had been opened up, and a horde of Drax raced toward us as if they… smelled us.
I squeezed my still-bleeding hand closed, trying to stem the flow of blood, but it was too late.
We were so totally fucked.
Even if Nico wasn’t dead, with the iron pins, he and Gabriel couldn’t dematerialize, and I wasn’t leaving them here.
The Drax closed in as Dante’s arms went around my shoulders, Gabriel kneeling in front of me, hands cupping my face.
Dante made no move to leave his brother, and neither of them bothered to face the incoming horde.
Why bother, when there were two hundred more Drax than any of us could ever hope to fight.
We were going to die here, and Luca would remain a prisoner. A worse fate, now that I knew my brother was still trapped inside his own rotting body.
Still aware.
The reek of them preceded their arrival, a choking thickness on the air I could almost chew.
“Come here, bella,” Gabriel murmured softly, pulling me down into his arms. Curling his body around me so I couldn’t see so much as a sliver of light. “No matter what happens, I won’t let you go. Keep your eyes closed and know that we love you with everything we have. We should have had more time.”
I couldn’t see what was happening, but my next breath tasted like smoke and leather and Dante.
Fire roared, heat skating over me as his fire demon took control, and I could just imagine what he looked like, a solid wall of flame, standing between us and those beasts, charging up through the ruins.
Outside of Gabriel’s protective arms, my husband was facing the horde alone, fighting for us.
Just as he would fight, I knew he would fall, and then we would follow.
“I love you, too,” I whispered. “When we reach the other side, you’d better still have your arms around me.”
The Drax had to be practically on top of us, mandibles clicking so loud, I felt the vibrations in my teeth, and then the air grew colder, frost—not fire—prickling my nose.
“I’ll never let you go,” Gabriel promised, then something wet fell and tracked down my cheek.
Death was inevitable, but was there any regret as bitter as this?
Of being cheated out of the glorious future we had fought for and deserved, snatched away by a petty little piece of shit who didn’t deserve to draw air.
Cold stung my skin now, like the very air was made from razor blades, carving fine lines in my skin. Everything even smelled different. Cleaner.
I cracked open an eye.
I couldn’t see a thing, but not because I was crushed against Gabriel.
Because all around us the air—the entire world—had turned darker than night. We could have been adrift in a void in the heavens, but the sounds… I focused not on the eerie flapping all around us, like a million raven wings churning the air, but on my uneven heartbeats, my jagged breathing.
Ever so slowly, light filtered back in, shafts of moonlight gilding ruined stone and the curled-up husks of hundreds of Drax, littering the incline all the way down to the docks. Three hundred or more, all of them downed in the space between heartbeats.
The Emissary stood on the peak of the tower like the captain of a galleon coming into port, wind lifting the gauzy black robe around him in undulating waves. Forbidding. Otherworldly. Beautiful.
“What the fuck?”
I was still coming to grips with the fact we hadn’t become Drax-treats when Severin materialized into the center of the carnage, blowing out a low, unbelieving whistle.
“I don’t know whether to congratulate you for surviving or throw you all in cells for being too dangerous to live.”
“It was all him.” Dante jerked his thumb at the Emissary, still looking all epic up on the belfry tower, hands on his hips, a steady wind now blowing his cape backward from his shoulders.
“I think he’s doing that on purpose,” I muttered beneath my breath. “He’s going to be ridiculous to live with. You know that, right?”
“Nico…” Severin cupped his hands around his mouth. “Come down from there.” Then he turned to me. “We have to get off this island. More guards and three more boats are on their way. I think Giovanni really means to kill you this time, and he’s taking no chances.”
“We head back to Emilia’s,” I decided, even though I feared even her protections wouldn’t stand up to the full assault of Blackwood’s magic, not when he’d been building his power—and his Drax army—for months now.
“I have a better idea.” Severin jumped slightly when Nico materialized between us, still in his Emissary form.
“We go somewhere even your uncle can’t get into without an invitation.”